Chris Yates

Chris Yates is a Database Administration Manager with over thirteen years of experience in the SQL industry. His experience includes design and implementation of both OLTP and OLAP solutions as well as assessment and implementation of SQL Server environments for best practices, performance, and high availability solutions accompanied by a strong development background. He enjoys helping others in the SQL Server community and does this by contributing on several SQL forums, creating “The SQL Professor”, and speaking at several SQL functions. His passion and focus is not only with technology but also helping others along their way and career path.

Blogs

PowerPoint to HTML with Claude AI

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I had an idea for an animated view of a sales tool, and started...

Don’t Miss Out – SQL Server Query Tuning Fundamentals Starts Next Monday!

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Next Monday, February 9, 2026, my one-day live online training SQL Server Query Tuning...

Monday Monitor Tips: SQL Auditing Preview

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One of the features we advocates have been advocating for is a better way...

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Forums

Tame Those Strings (Series)

By Steve Jones - SSC Editor

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Tame Those Strings (Series)

SSRS shared dataset parameters not showing in expression builder

By SLL1966

I am creating shared datasets that our executive staff can use for creating reports...

SSRS shared dataset parameters not showing in expression builder

By SLL1966

I am creating shared datasets that our executive staff can use for creating reports...

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Question of the Day

The Decoded Value

In SQL Server 2025, what is returned from this code:

DECLARE @message VARCHAR(50) = 'Hello SQL Server 2025!';
DECLARE @encoded VARCHAR(MAX);

SET @encoded = BASE64_ENCODE(CAST(@message AS VARBINARY(1000)));
SELECT BASE64_DECODE(@encoded) 

See possible answers